Ningbo's origins date back to over 6,800 years, and its history as a major city began 2,000 years ago, becoming a port for foreign trade during the Tang and Song dynasties. Most of the trade was done by foreign merchants coming to Ningbo.
History
Ningbo is one of China's oldest cities, with a history dating back to the Hemudu culture in 4800 BC . Once known as Mingzhou (明州), Ningbo was known as a trade city on the silk road at least two thousand years ago, and then as a major port, along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou in the Tang Dynasty; thereafter, the major ports for foreign trade in the Song Dynasty.
Eastern Jin Dynasty
Ningbo was the source of Sun En's revolt against the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Sun led the "Five Bushels of Rice" (Wudou Midao), a Daoist cult. They were called "armies of demons" and utilized "boats with decks". Zhoushan served as their main base, but they were defeated in the end in 402.
Tang and Song dynasty
Since the Tang dynasty Ningbo was an important commercial port. Arab merchants lived in Ningbo during the Song dynasty when it was known as Mingzhou, due to the fact that the oceangoing trade passages took precedence over land trade during this time. Another name for Mingzhou/Ningbo was Siming. It was a well-known center of oceangoing commerce with the foreign world. These merchants did not intermingle with native Chinese, practicing their own customs and religion and they inhabited ghettos. They did not try to proselytize Islam to Chinese.
During the Song dynasty Ningbo was a host for one of the "Offices for merchant ships" that were created by the government in many coastal cities to tax foreign imports.
The Jin dynasty (1115–1234) invaded the Song dynasty in the 12th century. Before he fled to Wenzhou, Ningbo served as a refuge for Emperor Gaozong of Song. In 1130 the Jin army reached Ningbo. But heavy resistance and the geography of the area halted the Jin advance, and they retreated and withdrew.
Ming Dynasty
The city of Ningbo was known in Europe for a long time under the name of Liampó. This is the usual spelling used e.g. in the standard Portuguese history, João de Barros's Décadas da Ásia, although Barros explained that Liampó was a Portuguese "corruption" of the more correct Nimpó.; the spelling Liampó is also attested in the Peregrination (Peregrinação) by Fernão Mendes Pinto, a (so-called) autobiography written in Portuguese during the 16th century. For the mid-16th-century Portuguese, the nearby promontory, which they called the cape of Liampó, after the nearby "illustrious city" was the easternmost known point of the mainland Asia.
The Portuguese began trading in Ningbo around 1522. By 1542, the Portuguese had a sizable community near Ningbo in Shuangyu. Portuguese activities from their Ningbo base included pillaging and attacking multiple Chinese port cities around Ningbo for plunder and spoil. They also enslaved people during their raids. The resulting complaints made it to the province's governor who commanded the settlement destroyed in 1548.
Japanese relations
The Ming dynasty decreed that Ningbo was the only place where Japanese-Chinese relations could take place. Ningbo, therefore, was the destination of many Japanese embassies during this period. After going into Ningbo they then went to other cities in China. In 1523, two rival embassies were sent to Ningbo by Japan, then in a state of civil war known as the Sengoku period. One of the emissaries was a Chinese, Song Suqing, who had moved to Japan earlier. Song Suqing became involved in a disagreement with a rival Japanese trade delegation, which led to the Ningbo Incident where the Japanese pillaged and plundered in the vicinity of Ningbo before escaping in stolen ships, defeating a Ming pursuing flotilla on the way. As a result of the incident, the port of Ningbo was closed to the Japanese – only two more Japanese missions were received (in 1540 and 1549) until the end of the Ming dynasty.
Ningbo was one of the places where the Portuguese first encountered the Japanese.